First time over 40 pc of displaced KPs cast their votes
STATE TIMES NEWS
New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government’s decision to abrogate Article 370 is showing results in the poll percentage in Jammu and Kashmir and has enhanced people’s trust in democracy, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said on Tuesday.
The home minister’s remarks came a day after about 38 per cent polling was recorded in the Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency where polling was held in the 4th phase of the general elections.
Srinagar recorded 14.43 per cent polling in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, 25.86 per cent in 2014, 25.55 per cent in 2009 and 18.57 per cent in 2004.
“The Modi government’s decision to abrogate Article 370 is showing results in the poll percentage as well. It has enhanced people’s trust in democracy and its roots have deepened in Jammu and Kashmir,” he wrote on ‘X’.
Shah said that through the rise in the poll percentage, the people of Jammu and Kashmir have given a befitting reply to those who opposed the abrogation of Article 370 provisions and are still advocating its restoration.
The Modi government abrogated Article 370, which gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir, in 2019 and bifurcated the erstwhile state into two Union Territories'” Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
Meanwhile, in an exclusive interview to a national daily Hindu, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that the rise in voting percentage from 14 percent in the past to 37 percent in the Kashmir Valley seat of Srinagar, which went to the polls in the fourth phase of the ongoing Lok Sabha election, was the “greatest testament to the rightness of the decision” to removing Article 370.
Shah also explained the BJP’s decision to not field a candidate in the three Valley seats of Srinagar, Baramulla and Anantnag-Rajouri. “There was an apaprachar (propaganda) against us that the Centre was doing development work in the J&K Valley to enforce rajnaitik prabhutva (political sovereignity) of the BJP there. After much serious thought, we decided that we will first build up our organisation on the ground and then give a candidate to fight polls,” he said.
“And let me tell you, for the first time, more than 40 percent of displaced Kashmiri Pandits have cast their votes when in the past this figure was in single digits,” the Home Minister added. He also addressed the demands for restoring Statehood to Jammu and Kashmir after the revocation of Article 370 that led to the erstwhile State being reduced to the status of a Union Territory. “See, I speak with a sense of sanctity in Parliament, and while the J&K Bill was debated, I said, first we will have President’s Rule, then the Bill will be fully implemented, followed by panchayat polls, delimitation, reservations, Assembly polls, and Statehood. I said this on the floor of Parliament,” Shah said.